‘What is so—’ she was about to say ‘objectionable,’ but she recollected her official position and that she was bound to be politic—‘so odd and unusual,’ observed Mrs Greatorex to Mrs Tubbs afterwards, ‘is not that Miss Hopgood should have radical views. Mrs Barker, I know, is a radical like her husband, but then she never puts herself forward, nor makes speeches. I never saw anything quite like it, except once in London at a dinner-party. Lady Montgomery then went on in much the same way, but she was a baronet’s wife; the baronet was in Parliament; she received a good deal and was obliged to entertain her guests.’
Poor Clara! she was really very unobtrusive and very modest, but there had been constant sympathy between her and her father, not the dumb sympathy as between man and dog, but that which can manifest itself in human fashion.
CLARA and her father were both chess-players, and at the time at which our history begins, Clara had been teaching Madge the game for about six months.
‘Check! after about a dozen moves. It is of no use to go on; you always beat me. I should not mind that if I were any better now than when I started. It is not in me.’
‘The reason is that you do not look two moves ahead. You never say to yourself, “Suppose I move there, what is she likely to do, and what can I do afterwards?”’
‘That is just what is impossible to me. I cannot hold myself down; the moment I go beyond the next move my thoughts fly away, and I am in a muddle, and my head turns round. I was not born for it. I can do what is under my nose well enough, but nothing more.’
‘The planning and the forecasting are the soul of the game. I should like to be a general, and play against armies and calculate the consequences of manœuvres.’
‘It would kill me. I should prefer the fighting. Besides, calculation is useless, for when I think that you will be sure to move such and such a piece, you generally do not.’
‘Then what makes the difference between the good and the bad player?’
‘Which is as much as to say that you give it up. You are very fond of that word instinct; I wish you would not use it.’
‘I have heard you use it, and say you instinctively like this person or that.’
‘Certainly; I do not deny that sometimes I am drawn to a person or repelled from him before I can say why; but I always force myself to discover afterwards the cause of my attraction or repulsion, and I believe it is a duty to do so. If we neglect it we are little better than the brutes, and may grossly deceive ourselves.’